Jordan POV-

Once the sun set on the horizon, Declan came out of his cabin with an odd looking object on his hands as light blue magic still swirled all around him, his eyes shining like bright beacons of blue magic as he stared at everyone present on deck.

Sonja and Tucker immediately made their way over to the priest, not even acknowledging the swirling magic around him that was pooling by their feet.

Her friends were probably used to it by now. The magic.

Jordan, on the other hand, couldn't take her eyes off of it.

She knew it was harmless, but as if on instinct, she scanned around the ship looking for Stefan to make sure he was a safe distance away.

Sure enough, he had been learning some self defense moves with Tom on the furthest side of the ship, both of them still deep in conversation and displaying punching motions as they made their way over.

As if sensing she had been watching, Stefan looked up from his motions and smiled, lifting up his eyebrow in question or as a tease...she always had a hard time differentiating the two.

Jordan just pointed her thumb at the priest a few feet behind her, causing Stefan to momentarily stop his approach to stare in awe.

He quickly made his way to the huddle of wizards to her right and began asking questions, probably about how that magic worked and all. The sight of his eyes lighting up almost as bright as Declan's made Jordan want to laugh.

That boy truly was something else.

"Sparkles, are we ready to go now?" Tom whined, placing his arm around her shoulder lazily.

"I suppose so, I'm not sure what that magic means. If only Declan had explained himself before locking himself up so abruptly" Jordan answered, pulling on her cape nervously.

When they had all mentioned Ianite's plans, Declan had huffed in annoyance before heading over to his room to work up whatever magic he deemed necessary for this trip instead of telling them where to go.

So everyone had waited, and passed the time as efficiently as they could.

While her favorite boys in the whole world spared, her Mianite champions stocked up the good weapons (mostly diamond stuff) for the trip, the wizards prepared their own magic along with some potions, Champwan and Declan made or summoned whatever THAT magic object was, and Jordan had taken it upon herself to accompany the pirates to their old home to place some flowers in honor of their families.

Despite everything that had transpired the past few hours, her and the pirates weren't necessarily best friends or anything, but she had enough compassion to know they might need someone to talk to, even if seeing all that death and destruction tore open a hole in her heart.

So she had gone, mostly to guard them from mobs while they did what they needed to do, but she had also found a few stray poppies and dandelions, silently placing them by their front door (which was savagely broken with claw marks of a mob Jordan had no interest pondering about).

Jordan had tried to comfort them, but didn't know how to execute that in a way that seemed meaningful or at least helpful. Instead she just convinced herself that the three pirates would be better once Capsize was back, once they began their journey.

"Declan, the sun is almost gone, if we are leaving it should be now before this place turns into mob central" Jordan said, trying not to grimace as she edged closer to said priest.

Those glowing blue eyes quickly turned her way and it took everything in her not to back away, or even let an ounce of fear show.

It's not like she still hated magic or anything, she had come to terms with it's existence. The cause of her hesitation was because of the fresh memories still circling around her head.

Dianite's fire magic that had been so close to killing her as of late.

Furia's magic, the way he levitated above them and launched his magic mercilessly.

Jordan knew that being afraid of Declan wasn't fair, but magic was a touchy subject as of late for her.

It's power. Her limited strength against it. Because whenever she was fighting against any sort of magic, she was at its mercy...magic wasn't as easy a force to fight against.

Declan must have seen her hesitation or maybe he could see into her mind and soul with all that magic, because traces of it diminished slightly around him as his eyes returned back to their original color behind his messy ginger locks.

"To get to Lord Ianite, I must open a portal that will take us to him. His stronghold. Because of it's peculiar location, it's best we take the ship, so this portal might take a while to open, not to mention it will deplete my magic completely" Declan said, his indifferent expression solid on his face despite his words.

Not waiting for anyone to add onto his words, Declan made his way to the front of the ship where the sun was setting in the sky and hurled the magical object out, making it effortlessly levitate a few meters from them, defiantly preventing gravity from running its course sinking it in the water.

Declan's magic began swirling once more, bright as the sun before him while everyone crowded a few feet behind him, watching his magic at work. Yellow and blue hues of magic lit up the area around them in a beautiful display.

The little object, no more than a small dot in the distance now, began to spin with the same light blue magic.

Not three seconds later, a giant portal began to form from the object. It stretched out both ways, towards the ground and the sky, reaching higher than any of the decaying towers in Ianite's castle, high enough for them to fly to and wide enough for the ship to pass without a problem.

Stefan reacher her side, surprising her while she was still hypnotized by the magic display. His smiling face began to glow a variety of changing colors emanating from the portal's core, and when she reached out to cup his cheek in wonder, her own fingers swirled with it's magical colors. They changed from purple to grey-ish, not only illuminating Stefan's face beautifully, but also creating quite a sight down on land, making the sand dune behind the portal look like a giant gem.

Despite everyone being distracted by the display, Champwan made his way to the steering controls and flew the ship to a decent altitude.

"Guys, we should probably go inside the cabin. This kind of magical particles could be harmful if we are just standing out here when we pass through" Waglington said, as his brothers began pushing him inside.

No one bothered to question Wag's warning, everyone knew to trust his word as they quickly rushed inside and huddled by the windows on the far side of the room to stare at the portal before them.

As they slowly inched closer, Jordan couldn't help but to hold on to Stefan's and Tom's hands. She trusted the priest with her life (then again he HAD saved it multiple times... quite literally), but the now looming solid purple particles made her stomach twist.

That feeling quickly turned into full blown panic when everything went dark, like a shadowed mist as the ship went through the portal.

All the voices and screams on the ship seemed like muffled echos, making it hard to work out what anyone was saying, but the feeling of her friends hands kept her from screaming in panic herself.

Though the darkness only lasted a few seconds, her heart was beating out of her chest as if had gone on for hours.

Then, the sight before her quickly willed her wildly beating heart to stop completely.

In the distance, Jordan could see what appeared to be a floating island in the middle of still darkness. This was the End alright, the lack of sunshine replaced by specks of purple light emanating from said darkness, creating it's familiar ominous aura.

But despite it's familiarity, it appeared that this place had a few mysteries of it's own as she heard a voice speak out... as if it was part of the wind.

"You cannot re-spawn is this sacred area " the voice said all around them with a heavy accent, though no one could see the source of the male voice.

Champwan stepped in the room and quickly scanned everyone form head to toe.

"Everyone good?" He asked as everyone nodded somewhat wide-eyed.

"Oh, the voice. That's probably Lord Brokkr" Champwan said, before heading back to steering the ship without an explanation on who this Lord was.

******

Ten minutes went by before they reached the outskirts of the island.

Once the ship had come to a stop, everyone rushed downstairs and strapped back their armor, opting for more protective sets this time, much like the one Stefan had worn earlier. No one was taking any chances here.

In fact, everyone was so cautious for once, that no one bothered with their simple flimsy weapons. Everyone had diamond swords and enchanted bows.

Well everyone that was going to head down at least.

Declan declared he wanted to speak to Mianite about their whereabouts, but without the world communicator, he had to reach him through more strenuous methods.

Having his magic depleted from his portal making, the wizards stayed behind to somehow lend Declan theirs, Champwan and Bluebeard staying behind to protect the magic welders from any surprises.

That left the champions, pirates, and Stefan to go explore ahead.

The priest didn't bother with 'good luck' or 'goodbye' as he sat down in the middle of the docs and light blue magic began to swirl around him in patterns that might have been words in another language.

Not knowing how long he would take, everyone staying behind promised to catch up to them as soon as possible.

Once that was settled, the exploration party looked down the docked side of the ship only to find there were no docks to descend to. Even their small wooden platform wouldn't be long enough to reach the ground.

So....they had to jump down to land, careful not to crack their skulls since Lord whatever basically told them death was final here too.

Tucker and the pirates went down first, the three of them landing with only a bit of stumbling. Sonja on the other hand landed perfectly with feline grace, laughing at the men who were already nursing their sore legs.

Tom being Tom, jumper down carelessly and almost fell through the gap between the island and the ship, but he laughed it off like it was the funniest thing in the world.

Jordan made note to yell his ear off for making her heart stop at a later time.

"Ready?" Stefan asked, shifting around his armor nervously and snapping her out of her thoughts.

"Yep. We just have to make sure to roll once we land, take the impact properly" she said, though it was probably harder than it seemed.

Still, she pushed her worries aside when Stefan jumped down. Jordan joined him almost instantly, willing her eyes not to close in fear as she felt her stomach sink at the feeling of the long drop.

Though not as graceful as the others, they both managed to not break any bones....

She might have laughed about it had she not felt grass around her fingertips. Grass in the End?!

That didn't make sense. Looking up from her place on the ground, Jordan realized the ground beneath her was not the only odd thing there.

The place around them didn't really look like the End Jordan had been to before. The place was still an island in the middle of a dark void, but the normal sights of the End sand dunes and mobs were nowhere to be seen.

This place had grass all around, trimmed neatly instead of grown wildly like back in the champion's island. There were also vast majority of trees all over the area, with peculiar yellow and orange leaves perched silently on their branches due to the absence of wind.

What was also odd was that they were immediately greeted with a stone building by where their ship had docked. From what Jordan could tell, it resembled a small simple home made out of stone, much too similar to the architecture style of Ianera.

"This place is so familiar" Amy Redbeard whispered, running a hand through a tree trunk nearby the small home.

No one needed further confirmation as they silently walked through the forest of yellow and orange trees and approached the stone building before them with weapons drawn and eyes scanning all around for threats.

Once before the one story home, Jordan realized something peculiar.

The place wasn't just made of stone, but nether stone as well, decorated with purple tinted windows and two friendly candles lit by the front door.

Lights on all over actually, but no sign of life.

Still, the traces of the nether made her pause. How could there be nether stone in Ianite's realm?

Tom had no such quarrels it seemed. He walked up to the door and knocked loudly, not listening to anyone's warnings.

Ten seconds of standing there must have been too long a wait for her friend, because he stepped back and kicked the door off its hinges proudly.

"Tom! That's someone's house!" Jordan screamed, going up the porch stairs and walking in after her friend.

Once inside, they were both greeted with an open space filled with chests and bookshelves from floor to ceiling.

"Not gonna lie, I expected something much different than this" Tom said beside her.

"Like what? an army of ender men?"Sonja said, slapping Tom on the back of the head as she and Tucker made their way inside.

Despite her best attempt to calm down her hipper friend, Tom began to try to pry open all the chest in his vicinity, finding them all locked.

Jordan laughed at her friend, putting away her weapons and began looking around the room curiously, trying not to stain the purple carpets as best she could before reaching a promising bookshelf.

Though she was in the far side of the room where bookshelves surrounded a messy worktable, she could still hear Tom screech in joy.

"Look, there is an ender chest!" Tom screamed, pointing at a dark purple chest with some odd locks. It was swirling with End particles from where it sat above shelves and chests, all the way by the ceiling.

She had never seen anything like it...

"Give me a boost guys, I'm taking that back with me" Tom added, forcing Tucker to lift him up as best he could while Sonja and Stefan walked over to her, wanting nothing to do with Tom's schemes.

Stefan went over to look at the books with her with just as much curiosity as she felt, his eyes gleaming at the old looking volumes collecting dust behind her. Sonja wasn't as excited about literature like her and Stefan, so she sat down on the dusty desk chair as she attempted to search through the locked drawers of the desk.

"What does an end chest do exactly. You seem very exited about it" Stefan asked, opening a book before him and mindlessly going through its dusty pages.

"Those kinds of chests haven't been seen in years. They were enchanted with special End powers and kept mainly in Ianite's continent. Though some wealthy families in other places claimed to have imported some" Tucker said across the room before Sonja had a chance to explain.

"I heard my training captain came form one of them wealthy families of Dianite's personal follower covens. He always bragged about having one" Tom said, reaching for a chest to better balance himself.

Sonja shushed them and turned the chair back to face Jordan and Stefan.

"They are like regular chests, but they use some crazy magic that connects them together to other End chests. Must be because of that portal magic that brought you guys here now that I think about it. Its like a chest with a portal" Sonja said

"Not to mention, if someone breaks them, you can just rebuild it and the items will still be there"Tom said excitedly, practically drooling at the sight of the End chest right above his head.

"The items must be stored within the End magic itself then. Like a magical storage unit" Stefan speculated

Jordan nodded in agreement as she opened up a few books, finding texts written in an odd language. In fact, all the books were written in languages that seemed too different to be from the same place.

"Sonj, does this look familiar to you?" Jordan asked, but once her friend rushed over and looked at the open books at the table she frowned.

"I have never seen anything like that before" she said, turning back to help Tom from falling down the stack of chest he made to get to the Ender chest.

Jordan might have come to his aid too, had Stefan not gently grabbed her by the elbow, pushing her closer to him.

"Claire, look" Stefan said quietly, pointing at the withering book on his hand whose leather bindings were falling apart. There were a few fading words on the cover, Jordan had to really get up close and squint her eyes to make out the writing she expected to be in one of the odd languages from before.

Hamlet.

Hamlet!?

Both of them looked at each other in shock before frantically opening up the book.

As they quickly scanned the pages, sure enough...this was the book they had read in school.

The one and only Shakespearian play from Earth.

"This can't be!" Jordan whispered, eyes wide "This is from home"

Stefan nodded, pocketing the book into one of the slots in his jacket before fastening his armor back in place once more.

"How did that get here?" she whispered to Stefan, careful not to catch her friends' attention.

"Maybe your god will know? Maybe this is his house" He said as his fingers ghosted her own.

"This place is...something is not right about it. This is unlike anything I've ever seen" she said

Stefan quickly turned back to the table and scanned all the books Jordan had left open.

"I don't recognize any of these languages. Maybe they are from other worlds too" Stefan said and both of them paled at the thought.

"Sonja didn't recognize any of them so you might be right"

Jordan might have kept staring the shelves for more familiar texts, but suddenly they all heard Amy's screams from outside the building.

"Guys!" She screamed, causing the champions and Stefan to leave their curiosity behind and rush down the steps towards the pirate.

As they reached her, everyone heard an ominous noise ringing out all over the place, causing Stefan to reach Jordan's side with worried eyes.

"Just End noises Stef, you'll get used to it" Jordan said, smiling at her friend before turning back to a startled Amy.

"You need to follow me! I think I know where to go" she said before slaying a creeping zombie.

Mobs...

In between the foliage and trunks of the trees all around them, Jordan could see more of those mobs approaching slowly, which was odd since zombies weren't know to reside in the End very often.

Sometimes they would fall through End portals from what she had been told, but maybe because this place was different ...they might be more abundant.

Shrugging her curiosity aside, Jordan and the others followed a startled Amy, trying their best to keep up with her frantic pace.